Soccer: David Beckham, defending champs in line for perfect capper

The frenzied screams and popping flashbulbs that became fixtures at Galaxy games in Carson six years ago will get one last workout in the South Bay next month.

After playing almost 100 regular-season Galaxy games, scoring 18 goals and managing almost 50 assists, David Beckham announced Monday he will end his career with the club Dec. 1 at MLS Cup at Home Depot Center against the Houston Dynamo.

Noticeably absent from the late afternoon announcement was any use of the "R" word - retirement - but Beckham left little doubt his days of bending the ball are over.

"I wanted to experience one last challenge before the end of my playing career," he said in a statement released by the club. "I don't see this as the end of my relationship with the league as my ambition is to be part of the ownership structure in the future."

That the former Manchester United, Real Madrid, AC Milan and England international will end his storied career here is sure to provide a huge boost in visibility to a championship game already poised for a larger audience than usual.

The game also will be played at 1:30 p.m. on a Saturday after the regular college-football season has largely run its course rather than on a little-watched Sunday slot against the NFL's Sunday Night Football.

Last year the largest crowd ever to see a soccer game at Home Depot Center - more than 30,000 overflowed onto the grass berm and crammed into temporary bleachers - watched the Galaxy beat Houston 1-0.

Likewise, the global audience of up to 120 million households in the 115 nations that aired all or part of last year's game is sure to explode as arguably the world's most famous soccer player plays his final game.

"Seldom does an athlete redefine a sport, and David not only took our franchise to another level but he took our sport to another level," said Tim Leiweke, president and CEO of Galaxy parent company Anschutz Entertainment Group.

A record average crowd of 18,807 watched MLS this year, propelled by huge numbers in Seattle, while MLS has expanded by seven teams since Beckham's arrival.

The Galaxy already were chasing history in an improbable title game many fans believed they wouldn't see in Southern California after an up-and-down year.

Beckham's final curtain call in a Galaxy jersey, win or lose, adds drama to a dramatic year that just keeps building.

Home Depot Center is hosting its fifth MLS Cup in 10 years in a title clash that marks the Galaxy's record eighth final appearance and Houston's fourth in the past seven years in a rematch of last year's game at the same venue.

Both teams reached the championship with identical 4-2 aggregate score lines in the two-game conference finals, despite the Galaxy losing 2-1 to Seattle on a rainy Sunday and the Dynamo tying D.C. United 1-1 earlier that day.

Still, it's not as if this game had an air of inevitability about it.

In fact, once the fourth-seeded Galaxy knocked off Vancouver in the Western Conference wild-card game and fifth-seeded Houston performed the same trick against Chicago in the East, the only team L.A. could have hosted at MLS Cup this year was the Dynamo.

The two Cup contenders are very different teams than they were last year, too, which makes the matchup even more unlikely.

Last year the Dynamo finished second in a weak Eastern conference with a 12-9-13 record and scored just four more goals than they conceded during the regular season.

But their defense stiffened late in the year and Houston came into the title game with a 264-minute shutout streak. The loss of influential midfielder Brad Davis to injury proved too much to overcome and the Dynamo succumbed 1-0 to a team unbeaten at home all season long.

This time around the Dynamo improved to 14-9-11, a run that included a 19-game home unbeaten streak and yet earned a playoff spot by just one point over Columbus.

Last year an imperious Galaxy swept aside the rest of the league in winning the regular-season title for the second season in a row with a 19-5-10 record.

But 2012 brought the 16-12-6 club back to earth.

Defensive inconsistency, a starting goalkeeper that took time off to enter therapy and the possibility an aging Beckham and Landon Donovan - struggling with motivational issues - could hang up their cleats at season's end became distractions on and off the field.

The Galaxy not only overcame that adversity, they came from behind to beat top-seeded San Jose in the conference semifinal and then rode out a dark and stormy Seattle on Sunday in front of more than 40,000 of the best fans in MLS to reach the final.

"We didn't play particularly well tonight, there's no question about that," Galaxy coach Bruce Arena said Sunday. "We did what we came here to do, advance into the MLS Cup final.

"We've got a couple of weeks to get ready for a real good team. Houston's in terrific form right now, so it's going to be a heck of a challenging final."

The occasion itself is different in other ways, too.

This year for the first time there's a lengthy 13-day layoff until MLS Cup.

That should give players on both teams who took the long way to the championship game - five games in 19 days - more time to recuperate from accumulated injuries, including the recently hobbled Beckham.

The Beckham era is about to end and the Galaxy have a chance to send him out on an apt high note before the eyes of the soccer world.

"He set out to grow MLS and the sport of soccer," MLS commissioner Don Garber said. "There is no doubt that MLS is far more popular and important here and abroad than it was when he arrived."

Now all that's left is for Beckham to help steer the Galaxy to another last championship so his sporting legacy locally can more easily elicit comparisons with his commercial accomplishments.